This is the debate that Mr. Julian and others have been engaging in around the whole question of anti-circumvention and the American side's commitment to not launching further trade actions over the life of this agreement. This agreement, I believe, gives us much greater protection against further trade actions being launched.
Today, even if we go forward and win legal cases, there will be appeal after appeal. When we finally exhaust all of the appeals, we may win the case, but that will not preclude or prevent the U.S. industry from launching yet more cases, armed with the information that they garnered in the process of the legal cases that had gone before the various panels to date.
So we could expect to see in very short order, without disagreement, another case that would allege injury, calculated in a little different way. We could possibly see some expansion of this case. So basically this agreement builds in commitments that the Americans--neither industry nor commerce--will not launch new cases.
For our side, we commit that the stumpage practices we have in place are the fundamental building block of this agreement. If we're going to make changes in stumpage systems that might be construed as a subsidy, then we're going to have to consult, as we have in the past. Provinces have always consulted with the U.S. Department of Commerce on policy changes they were making, simply because they wanted to avoid the ability under NAFTA for cases to be launched very quickly and very easily. They proved to be largely spurious cases, but the history of the file is to launch a case that is usually flimsy. It creates interim duties...when we started out, the combined anti-dumping and countervailing duties, as you'll recall, were 27%; after five years of litigation we're down to 10% plus--10.8%, I think it is now--so this agreement should protect us from that.
In terms of the policy latitude that provinces have, that is something that will be worked out. There is a clause in the agreement that provides for us to examine potential exit ramps, based on provincial policy change. That does not imply that every province should have exactly the same stumpage system or forest management system. There are different models that could achieve the same result.